“Absolutely,” was Kessler’s reply.

But exactly how does that work? High fructose corn syrup, a “highly processed sweetener” in Kessler’s words, can be found in so many food items these days it’s possible even the Corn Refiners Association has lost count.

While eliminating HFCS from your diet is difficult, it can be done. And in the process you may just find that you’re eating more “real food,” as Kessler advised Couric to do. “Real food” means food with real ingredients, food that can stand the test of label-reading scrutiny, food that your grandmother would have eaten.

And in case you’re wondering what Dr. Kessler thinks of the 2010 Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to rename high fructose corn syrup to the sweeter sounding “corn sugar,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying last year, “Whatever you call it, it should have little place in the American diet.”

So if you feel the same as Dr. Kessler on the subject, here are five ways you can follow his advice to  keep high fructose corn syrup out of your diet:

1. Buy organic varieties of certain foods

Sure, it would be great to buy all organic food. But if that’s not happening any time soon at your house, there’s an easy way to bring some organic into your life and at the same time avoid HFCS.

Just like in the good old days when ketchup, rolls, mustard, salad dressings, jam, and hundreds of other processed  food items didn’t contain this test-tube sweetener, organic foods do not contain HFCS.

So swap out some conventional condiments, breads and crackers for organic ones and  you’ll get an “easy pass” to faster HFCS-free shopping.

2. Shop at a Whole Foods Market

Is there a Whole Foods Market in your area? If so, the entire store is an HFCS-free zone!

High fructose corn syrup is on the Whole Foods Market list of “unacceptable ingredients for food,” a list that also includes such chemical additives as artificial colors and flavors, aspartame and bromated flour.

3. Steer clear of fast-food restaurants

Fast food places are hotbeds of bad ingredients – including, of course, high fructose corn syrup. Buns, dressings, drinks, condiments and sauces are likely culprits, but so are items such as cole slaw and potato salad and even many so-called “healthier choices” such as carrot salad and sliced fruits.

One chain where you don’t have to worry about HFCS, however, is Jason’s Deli, with over 230 locations in 28 states, which claims to have no trace of the sweetener in any of the food items it sells.

4. Eat more “food” and fewer “food products”

Sure it’s fast and easy to buy a ready-made meal (actually called a “TV dinner” when it was first introduced by Swanson in the early 1950s), but convenience comes at a cost, and if you’re trying to cut HFCS out of your diet, this is a very good place to start.

Author Michael Pollan says in his book “In Defense of Food,” that long lists of ingredients that are “unfamiliar, unpronounceable,” and “more than five in number or that include high fructose corn syrup,” are “reliable markers”  that the foods you are considering consuming have crossed the line from “foods to food products.”

5. Read the ingredient label before the item goes in your cart

Once something hits your shopping cart, it’s pretty much a done deal, so make your decisions carefully before that fateful moment. Despite what may seem like a bounty of delicious, healthy foods, supermarkets are stocked with scores of ersatz and chemical-laden products, including loads of items containing HFCS.

Pollan’s other shopping tip, however, may be the best one of all: “get out of the supermarket whenever possible…you won’t find any high fructose corn syrup at the farmers market.”

Pepsi Throwback is made with "real" sugar. Other front of package sugar claims may mean something else.

FoodIdentityTheft.com — May 15, 2012 — Now that Disney’s “Mary Poppins” has been resurrected as a stage play, a whole new generation has been introduced to the catchy tune “A Spoonful of Sugar” that Julie Andrews sang on the original movie sound track.  Unfortunately, the meaning of the word “sugar” is now a lot more ambiguous than it was back in the 1960s when that film made its debut.

These days, it’s quite easy to confuse “sugar” with “sugars.” According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), those terms mean different things depending on the “context” in which they appear. In other words, the exact place that either word occupies on a food product package can lead to an array of amazingly confusing claims.

The FDA definition of “sugar,” as found in the Code of Federal Regulations, means the natural sweet substance that is “obtained from sugar cane or sugar beets.” But the term you’ll find on the Nutrition Facts Label is “sugars” with an “s” which is defined as “the sum of all free mono- and disaccharides (such as glucose, fructose, lactose and sucrose),” with no information as to what the source is or if the “sugars” are naturally occurring or added.

To further the confusion (which is what started my investigation into this issue), numerous food packages claim the products inside have “less sugar” when in fact they don’t contain any real “sugar” at all.  A case in point: Capri Sun juice “drink,” which states on the package that it has  “25% less sugar than leading regular juice drinks.” Now Capri Sun is a product that in ingredient-label reality basically consists of nothing more than water and high fructose corn syrup. So what does “less sugar” on this HFCS-laced beverage that’s being marketed to kids really mean?

Taking my question to the FDA, I was first told that “’less sugar’ is a nutrient content claim defined under 21 CFR.” I was also told that “sugar-free” in actuality, means “sugars-free.” But when the agency addressed the wording in the Nutrition Labeling Education Act back in 1993, despite numerous comments to the effect that “sugars-free “would be more precise terminology, the FDA decided in favor of “sugar-free” instead, reasoning that “sugars-free” would be “confusing” to consumers.

Also in 1999, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) filed a petition with the FDA requesting that “added” sugars (as opposed to naturally present sugars in products such as pure juice and milk) be listed on the Nutrition Facts label, which oddly enough the American Dietetic Association went on record as opposing, saying that if folks want to see if the “sugars” are naturally occurring or added, they should consult the ingredient label.

If “sugar” means sucrose (from sugar cane or sugar beets), then shouldn’t “less sugar” mean less sucrose?

I asked the FDA that very question, and finally received this response in an e-mail: “Sugar can be a confusing term in that it can refer to both a food (or ingredient) and a nutrient. How it may be used depends on the context in which it is used.”  The agency further stated that when the term “sugar” is used as a “statement of identity or ingredient statement” it means real sugar, as in sucrose. “Otherwise, we view the term as a nutrient.” So the HFCS-loaded Capri Sun drink can state “less sugar,” even though it contains no real sugar, by making a front-of-package “nutrient” claim, which allows for “sugars” to be called “sugar.”

We don’t need any more sugar confusion!

If all this adds up to just more confusion while shopping, here are two things you can do.

First, bypass the Nutrition Facts label if you’re looking to avoid HFCS and other sugar “imposters” and go straight to the ingredient label, which will tell you exactly what sweeteners are used in the product. Natural cane or beet sugar will be called by its actual name: “sugar.”

Second, click here to send your comments to the FDA regarding the 2010 petition (which is still active and accepting comments at the agency) from the Corn Refiners Association to change the name of the unnatural HFCS to “corn sugar.”

Tell the FDA that when it comes to sweeteners, the issue is confusing enough already, thank you.  We don’t need any additional confusion created by a test-tube, laboratory-created sweetener masquerading as a “sugar” that it’s not.

This graphic appeared in the 1993 "FDA Consumer" special report called "Focus on Food Labeling." Reprint courtesy of the FDA

FoodIdentityTheft.com — May 10, 2012   On Tuesday, I wrote about the “five big things that are wrong with the nutrition facts label” (NFL) and got a lot of feedback from Food Identity Theft blog readers. Some alert individuals reminded me that I had neglected to mention one of the biggest problems with the NFL, and another about a contest held last year to redesign the label to try and make it more user-friendly.

First, I neglected to mention the zero trans-fats loophole. Numerous products are allowed to claim “0 trans-fats” on the nutrition facts label if their trans fat content is under 0.5 grams per serving. This can easily add up to significant amounts of artery-clogging trans fats, even if you think you’ve eaten none. The easy way around this loophole labeling is to look for the real culprit, partially or fully hydrogenated oil on the ingredient label, and leave the devious products that contain it on the supermarket shelf.

The contest, “Rethink the Food Label” was a project of the University of California at Berkeley School of Journalism, and featured some “celebrity” judges, including writer Michael Pollan and Center for Science in the Public Interest Executive Director Michael Jacobson.

The winning concept, from Renee Walker, a designer from San Francisco, is an intriguing and  appealing layout that gives a prominent display to food ingredients. Walker used some fairly simple food examples in her design, such as an apple, peanut butter and frozen vegetables, leading Pollan to say, “I liked being able to see the visual breakdown of foods, although I wonder how her design would work with more complicated products, like Lucky Charms, say, or a PowerBar. Even so, it’s a step in the right direction.”

My favorite is another Walker design which has a list of questions in the box that are answered yes, no or maybe, including “Is it real food?”; “Did your grandmother eat it?”; and “Is it better than a doughnut?”

The FDA, which says it is working on a big-time revision to the NFL, will be hard pressed to come up with something more to the point than that.

The “corn sugar” scam is still open for comment

As any reader of this blog knows, in 2010 the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) submitted a petition to the FDA to rename the increasingly unpopular sweetener high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to the kinder name “corn sugar.”

This sneaky move on the part of the CRA to rebrand its sweetener, that consumers are shunning in droves, is still active and sitting at the FDA docket. This means you still have a chance to make your voice heard and protest this outrageous attempt at concealing HFCS in foods.

In April, four consumer groups wrote to the FDA asking them again to deny the petition, saying that consumer opposition against it is running at 100 to 1. The current count of posted comments at the FDA docket site is 2070, with scores more yet to be posted online.

One of the comments I noticed today sums it up well: “Renaming an ingredient to try and trick people into buying it because they do not recognize its name anymore is an abuse of the system. The reason ingredients lists are required on food labels is so those with allergies (or wishes to avoid certain ingredients based on personal belief, diets, or their doctor’s recommendations) can easily identify the foods they are purchasing and ingesting.”

Comments from Citizens for Health supporters count among the many posted, but still more action is needed. Click here to send your comments to the FDA. You can copy and paste some sample messages from this page, or compose one of your own. You can tell the FDA “Food Identity Theft sent me!”

Mandatory on food labels since the early ’90s, with some tweaks over the years, the Nutrition Facts Label (NFL) is something that the FDA has been trying to hype the importance of for over a decade, even while trying to explain exactly what the heck it means.

The most comprehensive attempt to decipher this label is available from the FDA in the form of a hefty microsite containing NFL “programs and materials.” There you can find resources for kids and adults, as well as “educators, teachers, dietitians and health professionals,” which include a “spot the block” campaign for kids and “tweens” that features a  song called “Dishin’ the Nutrition Rap.”

But is information provided by the NFL so vital that it’s worth going through a virtual Rube Goldberg  maze of lessons to get the “facts” right?

Even if the NFL was easier to understand and more often used by consumers, all of the “facts” it contains are based on one, most often overlooked, piece of information – the “serving size.” Now a serving size, which often has very little resemblance to what is actually being consumed, is created using what’s called “reference amounts” from the FDA. These amounts are calculated by “food consumption surveys” and based on what a person would “customarily consume” in one sitting (which is apparently less than half of a 20 oz. bottle of Pepsi, or no more than 20 chips or two small macaroons).

Here are five big reasons the NFL isn’t the holy grail of nutrition information we’ve been led to believe:

1. All “sugars” are not created equal

This is "real" sugar. Organic or not, it can only come from sugar cane or sugar beets.

The “sugars” portion of the NFL includes fructose, glucose, lactose and sucrose, with no information as to what the source is – such as real sugar vs. high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – or if the “sugars” are naturally occurring or added. Plain milk, for example, contains 12 grams of “sugars,” and apple cider with no sweeteners added contains 30 grams. At the same time, an 8-ounce Pepsi that is made with high fructose corn syrup contains 28 grams.

To further the confusion, some beverages, such as Pepsi Next, which contain HFCS, aspartame and other artificial sweeteners, claim to have 60 percent “less sugar” on the label, while Pepsi Throwback, which is made from natural cane or beet sugar, boasts about being “made with real sugar.”

The NFL also doesn’t give us any hint of how much fructose is in a product.

I asked Dr. Michael Goran, director of the Childhood Obesity Research Center and professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, who has been studying fructose amounts in beverages, about his thoughts on the NFL “sugars” category.

“Since not all sugars are equal in things like sweetness and metabolic effects,” he said, “I strongly believe that the sugar composition should be defined on the label.” He added that such a distinction would be similar to consumers looking for different kinds of fats in foods. “Consumers now understand and look for differences in fat composition and know to avoid trans fats. I think the same should be true for fructose, and the only way a consumer can really know what’s in a food or beverage is for the sugars to be defined by their composition.”

2. The calorie amounts can be wrong

Even if you were to get the portion part figured correctly, the calorie count provided may be way off the mark,  A study at Tufts University found an average of 8 percent more calories than were listed on the NFL in selected frozen meals. One product, for example, Lean Cuisine shrimp and pasta had 20 percent more calories than reported on the package. Another diet dish, Weight Watchers lemon herb chicken, had 21 percent more calories than what the NFL claimed.

While not having correct caloric numbers on a package, especially a diet one, may seem careless, it appears that the FDA allows for a 20 percent margin of error in figuring such things. Wrong numbers were also found to be a common issue on restaurant websites, with the worst offender being Denny’s grits and butter, with the actual calorie count being 200 percent higher than what the restaurant chain listed.

3. Low salt numbers might mean more than just less sodium

Products, especially ones that are typically high in sodium such as soups, sauce, gravy and snack foods, that show low sodium numbers on the NFL may contain what I refer to as “tongue-tampering” ingredients – technically advanced laboratory concoctions that fool our brains into thinking we’re eating more salt than is really in the food.

Known as “salt enhancers” and made by a small number of high-tech companies around the world under different trade names, these chemicals have no taste of their own, but work by activating taste receptors on the tongue. You won’t see them in the supermarket or on the food label, but rather listed under the catch-all term “artificial flavorings,” or perhaps even “natural flavoring.”

Other types of  ‘taste altering’ chemicals are used for the purpose of enhancing sweet tastes and blocking bitter ones.

4. Where are the phytonutrients?

Health-promoting compounds found in fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and teas are notably missing from the NFL. Without mention of these flavonoids and other healthful compounds, some foods may look like they have nothing to offer, when in fact they can be a treasure trove of important phytonutrients.

Grape juice, for instance, along with an NFL “sugars” listing of 36 grams for a one-cup serving, also contains scores of important phytonutrients not found in, say, a bottle of Coke that has a similar NFL.

5. Spending ‘store time’ reading the NFL distracts from the real deal

To find out what’s really in the food we buy, there’s only one place to look, – the actual ingredient label. Not as  eye-catching’ as the NFL, the ingredient label, while it does have its limitations, will at least tell you if the food item you’re looking at is something you’re really interested in consuming. It will tell you if the food is made with real sugar or HFCS, if those blueberries are real or just fake blueberry bits, if the product contains MSG or hidden MSG – in other words, the kinds of things you would never learn if your only checked out the NFL.

Another bonus of reading the true ingredient label is that once you see just how many additives and fake ingredients are in processed foods, you might start buying more “real” foods made with actual ingredients – or perhaps making them yourself.

The “facts” found on a Nutrition Facts Label are often the least relevant facts when it comes to understanding the actual nutritional value of the product involved – if, indeed, they are “facts” at all.

FoodIdentityTheft.com — May3, 2012

Before the spring of 2007, not many people were familiar with the chemical melamine. But that year consumers learned a heart-wrenching lesson in food fraud as the news unfolded that melamine-tainted wheat gluten imported from China had resulted in the deaths of thousands of pets. The poisoned ingredient went from China to a pet food manufacturing company in Canada, which in turn produced pet food bearing the label of some big name companies in the U.S.

In a recent report commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security, food fraud is defined as being “the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain.”  And if you want to see just how prevalent food fraud is, check out the new online tool launched by the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP).

The USP, a non-profit organization that establishes standards for foods, supplements and drugs, recently launched its Food Fraud Database, said to be the first public compilation of its kind. Already the database has identified the top eight foods listed as “most vulnerable” ingredients for adulteration, among them olive oil, spices, milk and honey.

The ever-increasing amount of imported food also opens the door for increased risk. A recent FDA-sponsored report found that foods imported into the U.S. have tripled over the last decade, with seafood, fruits, nuts and vegetables leading the pack.

The database,  according to the USP,  will make things safer for consumers by “evaluating current and emerging risks for food fraud,” as well as improving testing methods.  “This…is a critical step in protecting consumers,” said Dr. John Spink, associate director of the Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection program at Michigan State University, one of the researchers involved in analyzing the new database.

If there’s one thing that the consumers should keep in mind to avoid deliberately adulterated products, it’s be careful of the brands you buy. Clare Narrod, a risk analysis program manager for the University of Maryland’s Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, is quoted as advising, “Avoiding fakes comes down largely to being an informed shopper and buying from trustworthy sources. Branded products tend to have more supply-chain safeguards” against such substitution and misrepresentation, she says.

And of course, the fewer processed food items you buy and the more you make dishes from “scratch” the less chance you have of being a food-fraud victim.

‘Loophole labeling’: the other kind of food fraud

Selling high fructose corn syrup as honey or passing off soybean oil as extra virgin olive oil  are certainly blatant examples of food fraud. But there’s another kind of product misrepresentation, one permitted by regulators and perpetrated in supermarkets all over the country.  We at Food Identity Theft refer to it as “loophole labeling,” meaning taking advantage of loose labeling laws that allow manufacturers to get away with things that should be illegal.

Exhibit A: the zero trans fat label. Cookies, peanut butter, cereal, breads, and numerous other items, that all actually contain trans fats, which can lead to coronary artery disease, are able to declare zero amounts on the nutrition facts panel,  We know, for instance,that there’s no way a product containing “fully hydrogenated oil,” as do the standard jars of Jif and Skippy peanut butter (including the Jif low-fat variety), can be trans-fat free.  But if those “choosey” moms who choose Jif are just looking at those so-called “nutrition facts” without bothering to read the actual ingredients, they (and their kids) can easily become victims of loophole labeling fraud.

According to the current rules stipulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as long as the amount of trans-fats in a product is under 0.5 grams per serving, it can declare a big zero for the artery-clogging ingredient on the label. And those “zeros” can add up. Eating three servings of different foods that contain amounts small enough to fit  ‘through the loophole’, for example, can easily amount to well over a gram of trans fat, even though you might think you’ve eaten none.

The answer? Check the actual ingredient label. If it lists any kind of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil, the product contains trans-fats, regardless of what the nutrition label says.

Exhibit B: Products that contain “no MSG.”  If a food contains the ingredient monosodium glutamate, that must be declared on the label. There are, however, numerous other ingredients that contain similarly “free” glutamate, including yeast extract; anything “hydrolyzed;” autolyzed yeast; soy protein concentrate and whey protein isolate. All of these MSG-sibling ingredients are added for one reason only: to make the product taste better.

Avoiding such “hidden MSG” takes both label reading and knowing what you’re looking for. (For some science-based facts about MSG, as well as a list of hidden MSG sources, check out the Truth in Labeling site).

In a way, it would be almost better to have no regulation at all than the kind that permits ‘loophole labeling’- at least then, we’d know it was up to us to find out what our food really contained, rather than relying on labels that are deliberately designed to deceive us. And since food fraud can affect not just our wallet, but our health and well being, becoming an ingredient-savvy shopper has become more crucial than ever.

Recently settled for just over $3 million, $2.5 million of which will be divided among consumers who purchased the product within a certain time frame (click here for the Nutella class-action settlement website if you want to claim your share), Hohenberg said she was misled by advertising stating Nutella can be part of an “easy, balanced breakfast.”

So while Nutella is on the hot seat for pushing its chocolatey product as a kids’ breakfast staple, we want to know how come these other “breakfast” items don’t have some moms just as angry;

• Kellogg’s Froot Loops: while Froot Loops contains no fruit at all, it does manage to get into the box partially hydrogenated oil, artificial colors and flavors and a preservative.

• Kellogg’s Smorz cereal: described as “crunchy graham cereal covered in rich chocolatey coating with marshmallows.” The ingredient panel for this breakfast item reads like an example of what not to eat, from hydrogenated oils to artificial colors and flavors to high fructose corn syrup. While the ingredients are less than good,  the website shows an image of wheat stalks against a blue sky with the caption “the goodness of grains.”
• Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch Chocolatey Crunch: The website tells us that the “Cap’n has been busy in his test kitchen again!” Well kids, we can only imagine what else is in that “test kitchen” since this “decadent delight” is made with refined corn and oat flour, artificial flavors, colors and preservatives.

Ferrero USA busied itself to revise its web sites and “modify certain marketing statements about Nutella,” which includes making the Nutella nutrition labels more prominent. Consumers can cash in on the case by receiving refunds of $4 for each jar purchased, up to $20. Meanwhile Cap’t Crunch, in the form of Quaker Oats, appears to be making almost exactly the same claim, that ‘Crunch’ served with ”low-fat milk and fresh fruit or a glass of 100% juice” makes a “nutritious” breakfast. Isn’t there a mom out there who want to haul the Cap’n into court?

Will the “real” sugar please stand up?

Several Food Identity Theft blog readers have asked about beverages, especially Pepsi Next, that make the claim “less sugar.” In the case of Pepsi Next, it says “60 percent less sugar…than Pepsi-cola.”

How can that be, since “regular” Pepsi uses high fructose corn syrup as its main sweetener. What does “less sugar” mean exactly?

I took the question to the Pepsi Cola company. In an e-mail exchange with Andrea Canabal in the company’s press department, I first asked what “60 percent less sugar” means.

Repeating the same message that’s found on the bottle, she told me that Next has “60 percent less sugar than regular Pepsi, yet maintains the real cola flavor.”

“I thought only Pepsi Throwback was made with sugar,” I replied.

“Pepsi Throwback is made with real sugar…” was her answer.

So there you have it. There’s “real” sugar –  and then there’s the other stuff, namely high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the unreal “sugar.”

Taking the question further, I contacted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which oversees packaging claims, and asked my question about the Pepsi Next “less sugar” label – we’ll see what they come back with. However, I do like the idea of calling the sweet substance made from sugar cane or sugar beets “real” sugar, and I think we should send the ‘unreal’ HFCS back where it came from – the laboratory.

Let the “real” sugar revival begin!

You'll find the honey in this cereal at the end of the ingredient list after cinnamon.

FoodIdentityTheft.com – April 26, 2012 – How much of something needs to be in a product before it can be used in the name?

Beekeeper Jim Fisher is one individual who has attempted to  answer that question himself – at least where honey is concerned.  Fisher believes that if you use that golden marketing word on a food package, there should be honey in the product – and not as the last ingredient, either.

The scores of products out there with “honey” in their names, but which actually contain little or none of the natural sweetener, are what prompted Fisher to create his “Wall of Shame” web site several years ago. Some foods – those containing no honey at all – ended up on the “worst” list (such as KC Masterpiece Honey Dijon Marinade,because, as Fisher puts it, “’high fructose corn syrup dijon’ just doesn’t somehow have the same ring to it”), while the  few that have significant amounts of honey are honored in his “Hall of Fame.”

But what are the rules about naming foods, and just how much honey or butter or fruit does it take to  make those words legitimate in a product name? Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees food packaging and claims, it seemed to be the most likely place to call for an answer.

But all the FDA would provide me with was a link to its “Food Labeling Guide” an 88- page document complete with answers to all your food labeling questions. But not that one. An hour-long search at the FDA site also turned up nothing.

So I decided the next step would be to call the FDA, tell them I was going to be making Linda’s honey butter cookies, and asking if I had to include any honey and butter in the recipe. Going back to Google to find a phone number, I noticed a search result for Food Label Consultants, a company in Mount Morris, New York that specializes in keeping its clients in compliance with the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, a voluminous list of rules that also establishes what you can and can’t say about food on a package.

What the FDA couldn’t seem to tell me, Food Label consultants President Steve Zoller could. In fact, Zoller, described as a “food industry veteran with over three decades of experience,” knew the answer right away.“If you use the word ‘honey’ it darn well better be in the food,” was how he put it.

But how much is required in a product before you can paste “honey” in big letters over the front of the box? “Not much — that’s not qualified anywhere,” Zoller replied, “There’s nothing in the Code that tells you that.”

That explains my Shop Rite brand Honey Oat Clusters, with the “honey” at the very end of the ingredient list, right after cinnamon. The cereal also comes in a box depicting a big honey jar and dipper, despite the fact that it actually contains more high fructose corn syrup than honey.

Some food products, Zoller said, have very specific legal descriptions of what they should be called, known as the “standard of identity.”

“Breads, enriched breads, milk, cheese, cocoa products, and a host of other things,” he noted, are “listed in the Code that require a minimum number of ingredients to be called by that name. But not all foods have this standard, which mostly applies to “basic’ things,” he told me.

And what about all those seemingly honey-less products on beekeeper Fisher’s “worst” list that contain not a drop of honey? According to Zoller, such deception would be in violation of the law, unless the product involved comes with a qualifying statement saying “artificially flavored” in type half the size of the word ‘honey.’ In that case “it wouldn’t have to contain any honey at all.”

But “in some areas the code is just not clear,”  Zoller added. “The code and the FDA are continually playing catch up with the industry.”

The Sunshine State, Maryland and Wisconsin are among the states that now have honey “standards,” or laws about what can and can’t be called “honey.” And violating these standards can get you in a sticky legal mess.

In Florida, recent class-action lawsuits have been filed against some big retailers, including Target and Walgreen’s for allegedly selling honey without so much as a trace of pollen.

The Florida standard specifies that “you cannot remove pollen except what is unavoidable in removing debris,” claims J. Andrew Meyer, an attorney involved with the current litigation, “If you filter (honey) to such an extent that you take all the pollen out, that’s not unavoidable, and if you sell that as honey, you’re in violation of the Florida honey standards.”

The processing of honey via “ultra-filtration,” a method of heating and filtering that removes all pollen, was first publicized last year by Food Safety News after it had tests performed on honey being sold in ten states at numerous retail outlets. What they found was that more than three-fourths of honey sold in the U.S. was so highly processed as to be totally devoid of pollen.

“I’m not saying whether pollen has any specific health benefits or not, That’s not the thrust of the lawsuit — we’re not putting pollen on trial,” Meyer maintains.“The important thing is that pollen is needed to identify the source of the honey; that’s one of its major benefits. Without pollen it’s very easy for Chinese honey to make it into the market.”

Pollen is a honey’s documentation or fingerprint, the only way to tell where it came from. And Chinese honey, which is cheap, often contaminated with drugs or pesticides or cut with low cost sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, was hit with a big import tariff in 2001 in an attempt to keep it from flooding the U.S. market. According to Food Safety News, to circumvent the ‘dumping’ tariff, Chinese honey is often shipped to other countries with altered documents and switched shipping drums and passed off as coming from a tariff-free origin. Without pollen, its origin would be impossible to trace.

FDA tells beekeepers: ‘buzz off’

In 2006 a citizen petition was filed with the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the American Beekeeping Federation and four other honey groups calling for a federal honey standard that would, among other things, set the pollen issue straight once and for all.

“The petition sat there and it sat there and it sat there because the FDA said they didn’t have any time to get to it,” said Mark Jensen, President of the American Honey Producers Association. “Around 2011 the FDA returned it to us and said, ‘sorry, we’re not going to take care of this,’ so as far as a federal standard goes it’s kind of in limbo right now,” Jensen added.

“There’s been a lot of effort in the past with the FDA,” said attorney Meyer, “but there’s no federal standard. Florida was the first state with a honey standard.”

“The important thing for consumers is they know what they are getting,” Meyer added. “If you see imitation cheese, it’s labeled as such. If honey has been altered, then consumers need to be educated so they can make a choice.”

And how to make that choice if you don’t live in a state that demands ‘honey honesty’? Meyer suggests buying from a farmers market or local supplier, rather then from a retail chain. “That’s the best way to know you’re getting the real deal,” he says.

Not to mention the best way to keep local beekeepers in business.

FoodIdentityTheft.com – April 19, 2012 -

In a letter sent this week to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, the National Consumers League (NCL), Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America and Shape Up America!, has once again asked the FDA to deny the 2010 petition from the Corn Refiners Association (CRA ) to have high fructose corn syrup renamed “corn sugar” on food labels.

“The main thing we wanted to bring attention to is the preponderance of opposition to the petition,” said Teresa Green, a food safety and nutritional fellow for the NCL.

The organizations involved have all previously gone on record as opposing the HFCS name switch in comments submitted last year. But with the petition still sitting at the FDA, the corn refiners have continued with their multimillion-dollar “sugar is sugar” advertising campaign, which the letter calls “a platform for marketing efforts that confuse the public about the nature of HFCS.”

The ads are also the subject of a pending lawsuit filed by sugar growers and refiners alleging that the CRA and its member companies conspired to “deceive the public” about HFCS.

The consumer groups also pointed out that there are 1,847 comments submitted by individuals opposing the name change that have been posted at the FDA docket, with an additional 3,000 or so sent to the agency but not yet put online.

“This means,” the letter noted, “that nearly 5,000 individual consumers have written FDA and oppose the CRA petition for a name change,” whereas “only about 40 individual consumers have submitted comments supporting the CRA position.” Those numbers show that opposition to the “corn sugar” name switch is running on “a ratio of 100 to 1” the NCL said in a press release sent out this week.

The letter also mentions HFCS 90, a super-high fructose sweetener that I wrote about a few weeks ago. HFCS 90 is a high fructose corn syrup formulation that is 90 percent fructose, extremely sweet, and pitched by a leading manufacturer as being “the ideal choice for reduced calorie foods such as beverages, jellies and dressings.”

CRA already asked to can the “corn sugar” ads

The CRA, in fact,  has been flooding the airwaves with its pitch for several years, trying to convince consumers that “sugar is sugar” and that there is essentially no difference between natural sugar and HFCS. But last October, a letter from the FDA released by the Associated Press revealed that the agency had noticed the Big Corn campaign as well, and wasn’t happy with it. The letter asked the CRA to stop using “corn sugar” as a synonym for HFCS and to “re-examine your websites and modify statements that use the term.” But that request seems to have been totally disregarded by the corn refiners, as the consumer groups complained in their own letter. “The FDA’s warning letter to the CRA,” it notes, “is a step in the right direction, but the term ‘corn sugar’ continues to appear on the CRA web site…(and) the term ‘corn sugar’ continues to appear in an extensive nationally televised advertising campaign…”

But while the CRA continues to refer to HFCS as a “sugar made from corn,” consumers aren’t so easily fooled, if the latest comments found at the FDA docket that talk about “ being fooled by the CRA” and “consumer deception” are any indication. One respondent, for instance, posted this observation: “consumer clarity????? How long has High Fructose Corn Syrup been on the market??? Don’t you think that consumers already have ‘clarity’ as to what this is. I’m no genius but you cannot fool the public like that.”

Or, as the letter from the consumer organizations put it, “Permitting HFCS to be called ‘corn sugar’ would allow manufacturers to conceal this ingredient from consumers…” adding, “Given the thousands of comments FDA has received opposing the pendency of the CRA petition, and the continued misleading use by CRA of the term ‘corn sugar’ in marketing, FDA should act decisively and deny the CRA petition.”

Keep those comments on this “corn sugar” scam coming!

As continued pressure is put on the FDA to deny the CRA petition that’s been lingering at the agency for some time now, it’s vital that consumer comments continue to come in. The delay means you still have a chance to speak your mind about this classic case of attempted food identity theft!

Click here to send your comments to the FDA. You can copy and paste some sample messages from this page, or compose one of your own.

And remember –“corn sugar” is actually dextrose, a long-recognized product that contains NO fructose. And “sugar,” one of the oldest natural sweeteners, can only be derived from sugar cane or sugar beets, not from a  laboratory-concocted sweetener. So please tell the FDA to reject this ridiculous attempt to conceal HFCS on packaging. You can say, “Food Identity Theft sent me!”

The only way to really know what’s inside the package is to read the ingredient label. So bypass the pretty picture, flip the item over, and find out for yourself “what’s in a name” – a genuine product description or simply a marketing ploy, such as the ones that follow:

1. Snapple Apple: It’s really neat how “Snapple” rhymes with “apple,” but that’s about where the association with the crunchy fruit ends. Despite the pretty apple on the label, Snapple Apple contains not a hint of actual apples. How can this be, you ask? Well, “juice drinks,” as reported by The Consumerist, are not required to have the bottle contents match label pictures, or the name, for that matter. In fact, juice drinks can contain as little as 5 percent actual juice. Snapple Apple,  according to its label information, uses just 10 percent juice  – pear juice at that – along with “natural” flavors” to achieve its “appley” flavor. (Apparently, however, Snapple has perfected this ersatz-apple formula, as reviews on Amazon.com talk about it tasting like “taking a bite out of an actual juicy apple!” and more like “Fuji” apples than “regular apple juice.”)

Oh, and one more thing – if you’re looking for genuine juice from the named fruit, steer clear of anything called a “juice drink.”

2. Capri Sun Mountain Cooler mixed fruit: This is another glaring example of why you can’t select products based on the packaging. While the box announces it has “no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives” and shows an athletic figure biking out of a scene filled with delicious fruit, this particular “juice drink” is really little more than water and high fructose corn syrup (the first two ingredients) with a bit of apple juice concentrate thrown in to justify using the word “fruit.”

3. Grape-Nuts: Since Grape-Nuts has been around a very long time – introduced in 1898 by Charles W. Post – you might say that its disingenuous name is probably “grandfathered” in by this time, since the cereal contains neither grapes nor nuts. So what is it, then? The main ingredient in Grape-Nuts is whole grain wheat flour and barley which is baked into giant blocks that are ground into the familiar hard, gravel-like cereal. Exactly how Grape-Nuts got its name is still a mystery, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. “Maltose is the only sugar in Grape Nuts,” the article notes. “Mr. Post may have called it grape sugar, or thought Grape Nuts looked like grape seeds, or that grape seeds looked like nuts, or that malted barley tasted nutty. Nobody seems to know.”

4. Special K Strawberry Cereal Bars: With luscious strawberries pictured on the package and advertising copy claiming “these strawberry flavored cereal bars are made to satisfy with rice and whole grain wheat flakes, sweet strawberries, and oh-so-yummy icing,” you would think there would be at least a hint of actual strawberries inside. But no, what constitutes “strawberries” in these bars is actually made from cranberries, along with “natural strawberry flavor and other natural flavors.” Also laced with such additives as partially hydrogenated oil, artificial flavors and BHT, this is not exactly one of “the secret weapons” (as the ad copy puts it) you need “when you’re on a mission to look and feel great.”

5. Hungry Jack Blueberry Wheat Pancake Mix: A super-antioxidant, blueberries are something that are increasingly in demand. Food manufacturers also love blueberries, and seem to slap the name all over products that don’t contain any. Of all the fake foods I’ve reported on, the lion’s share  appear to be ones with “blueberry” in the name  (with strawberries coming in a close second). This product is another example of a bogus blueberry food, with “artificial blueberry bits” comprised of corn flour, partially hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors and colors.  Of course to find that out, you need to read the ingredient list, rather than just being taken in by the appetizing-looking blueberry pancakes pictured on the front of the package.

6. Del Monte Seafood Cocktail Sauce made from California Vine-Ripened Tomatoes: This product, which actually uses reconstituted tomato concentrate, is not the “vine-ripened” vision it appears to be. Last April the National Consumers League sent a letter to the FDA saying that claims such as these are “false and misleading.” If you want to buy a sauce made from fresh tomatoes rather than processed tomato paste, look for “tomatoes” as the first ingredient, not tomato puree or water and tomato paste.

Remember, when it comes to a processed food product or beverage, the name, along with the packaging, descriptive copy and graphics, was most likely created  by an ad agency to entice you into buying that item. But the name and image given to a product no more tells you what it really contains than a person’s name and style of dress reveals his or her true character.